


Four Weddings and a Blizzard

by geekprincess26



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Attempted Sexual Assault, Drama, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-01 03:38:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11477829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geekprincess26/pseuds/geekprincess26
Summary: They live in the modern American Midwest instead of in long-ago Westeros, and they don't live in castles or fight with swords.  But they're still the Starks, and they still love drama, ale, sibling rivalry, and loud family parties.  Their weddings are definitely never dull affairs.  And Jon Snow still knows nothing, at least where Sansa Stark is concerned.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the amazing Jonsa 2017 Summer Challenge hosted by @jonsa-creatives on Tumblr. Each chapter covers a different day's theme.

Robb Stark married Jeyne Westerling on a fine Saturday afternoon in the old country church the bride had attended as a child. The June sunlight poured through the stained glass windows, bathing the whole sanctuary in a dazzling cascade of color. Lilacs and lilies of the valley twinkled along the aisles and in the hairpieces of the bridesmaids, outfitted in off-the-shoulder gowns of lavender taffeta.

 

Sansa Stark, who stood on the second step down from the bride, fanned herself and adjusted her heavy bouquet for the fourth time in ten minutes. She shut her eyes halfway and imagined her dull, unfashionable taffeta dress transforming, like Cinderella’s, into chiffon, except that her gown would be one-shouldered, knee-length, and a trendy shade of lemon yellow. Of course, it was Jeyne’s wedding, and Sansa, like any good bridesmaid, would suffer with a smile through being photographed for posterity over the next few hours in the boring, heavy dress the bride had chosen. She would even be halfway happy about it, for Jeyne was a wonderfully sweet girl and perfect for Robb in every way. But the dresses, the horribly dated headpieces, and indeed the entire aesthetic were far too old-fashioned and Midwestern country for Sansa’s tastes – and Sansa liked to think she had decent enough taste. She had just finished her junior year at the University of Minnesota, and her sculptures and fabric designs had not only turned her art professors’ heads, but also won her a place at the coveted six-week Cerwyn Memorial Summer Undergraduate Seminar for the Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design. When she adjusted her bouquet yet again, she pretended that it was a lump of clay she was shaping under the tutelage of the famous artist Jaime Lannister, who was also slated to give the keynote speech on opening night the following Friday.

 

Sansa did not realize she was quite literally bouncing with excitement in her three-inch high silver heels until she felt a nudge to her ribs and turned to see her sister Arya scowling at her. She stopped so suddenly that she nearly fell over backwards. Heat flooded her face as she regained her balance and turned her attention back to a beaming Robb, who was tenderly placing a diamond-studded wedding band on Jeyne’s hand. Sansa could not help smiling along with him, nor could she hold back the hope, far more hopelessly outdated than even the hairpieces but still more deeply rooted than she cared to admit, that her own husband would look at her like that as he put on her wedding band some day. Of course, it would help if Joffrey Baratheon, her boyfriend of four years, would look at her half that lovingly. However, Sansa’s busy class and studio schedule last semester, as well as Joffrey’s commitments to the school’s fencing and golf teams, had frayed their tempers, and they had fought much more than usual. The beaming, blue-eyed grins that had won Sansa’s heart when she had first met him had gradually been replaced by cutting remarks about how she used to dress up more for him, and how she used to spend more time for him, and how much more she smiled at other boys now. He usually only said such things when he was unusually stressed, but Sansa told herself it had been an unusually stressful semester for them both. Still, it had come and gone, and Joffrey had not backed off much with his remarks, so she had told him how patently ridiculous they were. That had only brought about the silent treatment from him, and she had practically had to beg him to attend Robb’s wedding with her. Moreover, since they had arrived he had gone on nonstop about how low-class the hotel was and how utterly tasteless the alcohol was and how he hoped he’d get compensated with a good hand job or two that night. Sansa had called him an asshole and slammed the hotel room door in his face.

 

That had been this morning, and Sansa, risking a glance at where Joffrey sat in the second pew back, saw the same self-righteous smirk from before plastered onto his face. He shifted sharply to his right, which clearly startled the dark-haired young man sitting next to him. Sansa frowned. The other man seemed familiar for some reason, but she could not place him. Probably one of Robb’s friends whom she had met in passing; Robb, headed into his first year in Carnegie Mellon’s MBA program, was a public relations specialist who collected friends wherever he went.

 

Joffrey winked at Sansa, who pointedly turned back to face the bride and groom. She kept her eyes on them until the minister finally proclaimed them husband and wife, and let out a sigh of relief as the congregation applauded and she prepared to follow Robb and Jeyne out of the sanctuary.

 

Sansa was greeting at least the hundredth guest in the receiving line when she heard a shriek beside her and turned to see Arya launching herself past the woman’s startled husband and into the arms of the dark-haired man Joffrey had shoved earlier.

 

“Jon!” she squealed so loudly that Sansa would have covered her ears at once had it not been for that clunky bouquet. “You made it!”

 

The man laughed, and when he set her down he grinned and mussed her hair. “Course I did,” he responded. “Come on, Arya. I told you to have faith in me.”

 

Arya scowled at him. “You said you weren’t sure your commanding officer would let you go, though.”

 

The man’s grin widened. “Nope,” he replied, “but _his_ commanding officer decided he liked me, and when I told him I was losing my best friend to a woman and wanted to mourn his passing, he gave me my pass five minutes later.”

 

Arya rolled her eyes. “I hope he gives you hell, anyway,” she said, and turned to Sansa, who was staring at them as if they had both grown horns.

 

“Sansa!” the man said warmly and held out his arm. Sansa raised both of her eyebrows.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I – have we met?”

 

That earned her another elbow to the ribs from Arya.

 

“You dolt!” she exclaimed. “You don’t remember Jon Snow?”

 

Sansa felt her face flushing for the millionth time that day as she shook her head.

 

“No, I’m sorry,” she said, and Arya’s eyes nearly fell out of her head. Beside her, both Jon Snow’s hand and his face fell.

 

“You know, Robb’s roommate? Best friend? All that? The one who always won at snowball fights when he and Robb were home on break and the only one who could beat Bran at chess?” At each description from Arya, whose voice was getting progressively louder, Sansa shook her head and her face got redder.

 

“You know,” Arya continued, and now a few of the guests had begun to stare at her, “the guy who won half the medals the National Guard gives out during just his first year? No? How about the guy who fixed your laptop for you when it crashed over fall break that one time? You remember that guy?”

 

Sansa winced and shut her eyes. She had still been living at home when Robb had gone off to the University of Wisconsin, of course; but not long after that, she had begun dating Joffrey and spending more time with his friends than with her family. She did recall bursting into tears of frustration when her laptop had quit on her right before her midterm exams during her junior year of high school, and now that she thought about it, she remembered Robb introducing her to a stammering boy with thick spectacles and dark, frizzy hair. She had dried her tears just long enough to introduce herself before leaving them to their task, but she had forgotten the other boy’s name almost as soon as he had said it. Jason? Jeff? Not that it had mattered much to her at the time as long as her computer recovered and she could actually enjoy herself properly on her date with Joffrey that night, she remembered thinking, and winced again.

 

“Jesus Christ, Sansa, are you for real?” Arya’s shrill voice made Sansa’s eyes snap open just in time to see Catelyn Stark turning toward in her daughters’ direction.

 

“Arya, shush! You’ll get Mom mad!” she exclaimed, at the same time Jon laid his hand on the other girl’s arm and said, “It’s fine, Arya, I had the glasses then. And no beard,” he added, smiling, although Sansa could see a hint of disbelief in his expression. She forced herself to turn and give him a very apologetic look.

 

“I’m really, really sorry, um – Jon – I do remember now – ” she began, but was cut off by the sight of her boyfriend elbowing his way past the bridesmaid behind Arya.

 

“Thanks for keeping my girlfriend entertained while I had to wait in line,” he said to Jon, his smile thin and unconvincing.

 

Sansa rolled her eyes. “This is Robb’s old friend Jon Snow, Joffrey,” she said, and turned again to Jon. “Jon, this is my boyfriend, Joffrey Baratheon.”

 

Jon’s expression tightened, but after a moment he extended his hand. Joffrey did not raise his, and Sansa was on the verge of hissing at him when one of the groomsmen shouted Jon’s name, and Jeyne’s aunt caught Sansa’s arm to ask her who was taking down the decorations in the sanctuary. By the time Sansa had finished speaking to her and turned to look for Jon, he was nowhere to be found.

 

Three hours later, Sansa sipped the last of her second glass of rum and orange juice and lifted her taffeta skirt so she could sweep freely over to one of the trash bins near the bathrooms. She yelped when someone caught her by the arm, but the yelp turned into an annoyed sigh when she saw that that someone was Joffrey.

 

“Jesus, Joffrey, you didn’t have to scare me like that,” she muttered. “If you wanted to grab me, why didn’t you grab me for more than two dances out there?” She jerked her head back toward the dance floor, where Joffrey had left her stranded for most of the night while he hit the bar and held court with their classmates at one of the corner tables.

 

Joffrey scoffed, and Sansa’s nose wrinkled at the smell of whiskey on his breath. “With those hicks? Please.”

 

Sansa rolled her eyes again. “Some of those hicks are my family, Joffrey. You could at least be polite for a couple of hours.”

 

Joffrey snickered. “Well, how about I be polite and dance with you now?” he replied. “And then you can be polite to me in the bathrooms.” He gave her a conspiratorial grin and inclined his head down the hall toward the restrooms.

 

Sansa snorted. “With the way you’ve been behaving? Geez, Joffrey, go stuff yourself.” She turned to march away, but Joffrey caught her arm and dragged her back toward him. Sansa stumbled over one of her heels, and her right ankle twisted underneath her.

 

“Jesus Christ, Joffrey, that was my ankle!” she hissed. “Let me go. You’re drunk!”

 

Joffrey only laughed and pulled her toward him again.

 

“Not too drunk to appreciate a good hand job,” he spat at her and turned to head down the hallway, yanking a stumbling Sansa behind him.

 

“Jesus! Let _go_ of me, I said!” Sansa hated the note of panic that had crept into her voice, but Joffrey had never treated her quite so roughly before. She tried to pull her arm free, but his grip was surprisingly strong, considering the amount of alcohol he had certainly consumed by then, so Sansa aimed a kick at his shin. He dodged it, and the momentum swung them both into the corner, where her injured ankle twisted underneath her. She screamed, but the horns from the sound of Kool  & the Gang’s “Celebration” beginning to play over the reception hall’s speakers drowned it out. When she tried to scream again, Joffrey clamped his hand around her mouth, so she inhaled as much air as she could through her nose and prepared to swing her stiletto heel straight at his shin.

 

“Whoa!” A startled exclamation from the other end of the hallway loosened Joffrey’s grip on Sansa long enough for her to kick hard in his direction. She missed, but she managed to dodge him and crawl a few feet back toward the dance floor. She heard a grunt, a thud, and a choking noise, and turned to see someone pinning Joffrey against the wall by his neck. She had to squint hard into the dim light of the hallway to see that it was Jon Snow.

 

“Sansa, are you all right?” Jon’s voice was calm, but when Sansa managed to pull herself to her feet against the wall, she saw his face riddled with concern. She managed to nod.

 

“Good,” said Jon. “My phone’s in my pocket. You can use it to call the police if you don’t have yours on you.”

 

Joffrey’s face contorted with anger when he heard that. Clearly, Jon did not intend to do him any real harm, although he looked as though he would just as soon strangle the other man then and there.

 

Sansa shook her head. “I just want him to go away,” she said, her voice shaking hard. She drew in a deep breath before speaking again. “I – it’s Robb’s wedding. I don’t want any trouble. Just as long as he goes away.”  


Jon gave her a searching look. His eyes, which Sansa could now see were as gray as her silver earrings, shone with concern. “Are you sure?” he asked. “I’d be glad to keep him here till the police come.”

 

Sansa shook her head. The thought of being surrounded and questioned and inspected by any number people, let alone a set of police officers who were sure to be exclusively male, made her recoil.

 

“No,” she said. “I just want him gone.”

 

She had to say it three times because the singers were howling, “Celebrate good times – uh-huh!” so enthusiastically over the speakers, but finally Jon heard her. He hesitated for a moment, but finally relaxed his grip. “All right,” he said, and trained his full attention on Joffrey.

 

“I’m calling you a cab,” he growled, “but only because you’re too drunk to drive home. Otherwise, I’d throw your ass out on the street right now.” He turned to Sansa, but just then the men’s bathroom door opened down the hall, and one of the groomsmen stepped out of it.

 

Jon smiled. “Ah, Jory! Would you mind calling a cab for me?”

 

Jory Cassel, who at six and a half feet tall was Robb and Sansa’s biggest cousin and who had never cared for Joffrey any more than Robb had, took one look at the latter and grinned.

 

“I’ll do you one better, Snow,” he said and reached for Joffrey’s arm. Joffrey let out a noise that sounded eerily like a pig’s squeal, or would have if it had not been so thoroughly muffled by the belting of “Ce – le – bra – tion!” over the reception hall speakers.

 

“You can’t,” he quavered. “I’ll call the police myself – tell them you assaulted me – ”

 

“Then I’ll tell them the truth,” Sansa choked out. All three men turned to stare at her, although Jon did not loose his grip on Joffrey by so much as an inch.

 

“They’ll believe me over you,” Sansa continued. “You know they will.”

 

The words used up the last of her energy, and she slumped downward along the wall. Jon, who was closer to Sansa than Jory, sprang over and caught her just before she hit the floor.

 

“Are you sure you’re all right, Sansa?” he asked. Sansa heard Jory saying something she suspected was similar in a very concerned voice somewhere from Joffrey’s direction. She nodded slowly.

 

“It’s just – my ankle hurts a little,” she said, and Jon nodded.

 

“Can you walk?” he asked. “I – Robb says a couple of Jeyne’s friends here are nurses. If we can get you to the alcove there – ” he nodded off in the opposite direction from the bathrooms – “one of them can see to you, and call a doctor if you need one.”

 

Sansa nodded. “Sure,” she managed to rasp out. She tried to pull off her shoes, but her hands were shaking too hard.

 

“Here – may I try?” Jon’s voice was quiet, almost hesitant, and when she looked up at him he was rubbing the back of his neck. Suddenly she remembered seeing exactly the same thing five years ago when a boy with thick spectacles and no beard had been fiddling with the track pad of her blinking, broken computer and she had wondered where Robb had picked up that freak. She managed to nod and hold out her good foot for Jon to work on before a tear rolled down her cheek, and then another.

 

“I’m sorry,” she quavered, and Jon’s eyes flickered up to her own at once. He reached into his blazer and pulled out a handkerchief, which she took at once.

 

“Thank you,” she whispered. “And – I am sorry – all this trouble – and I didn’t even recognize you – I’m an idiot – ”

 

Jon shook his head. “Don’t worry about it, Sansa,” he said. His voice was soft and warm, and another set of tears trickled down Sansa’s cheeks.

 

“Can – can you forgive me?” she asked, her voice still wobbly.

 

One corner of Jon’s mouth curled upward as he gently removed Sansa’s last shoe. He set it down and extended both of his hands to her.

 

“There’s nothing to forgive,” he said. “But if you want me to, I do.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya gets married. Sansa, still single and still dealing with the aftermath of Robb's wedding, commiserates with Jon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was written for of Day 3 of the Jonsa 2017 Summer Challenge hosted by @jonsa-creatives on Tumblr and based on the theme "Fixations".

“I never did get that girl’s fixation with flannel,” groused Jon Snow.

 

Sansa Stark grinned. “Come on, Jon,” she teased. “You’re from Wisconsin. Surely you understand the whole state’s fixated on flannel?”

 

Jon Snow rolled his eyes at her, and Sansa caught his lips turning upward for a fraction of a second before they reverted to their customary frown.

 

“Right,” he replied, “but she’s a lot more fixated than 99.9 percent of the state.” He gestured in the general direction of the lake for emphasis, as if the water itself would turn to flannel on cue.

 

Sansa grinned again. Her sister Arya had married Gendry Waters that afternoon on a plot of wooded land they owned in the forests of northern Wisconsin. It was the last day of August, and a hint of autumn had colored the breeze that had ruffled the bride’s hair into her groom’s face as they had spoken their vows under a white wicker arch in front of the lake. Gendry had outfitted his groomsmen, including Jon, in blue jeans and gray plaid flannel shirts at the behest of the bride, who had in turn chosen gray flannel shirtdresses for Sansa and the other bridesmaids. Arya herself had worn an enormous gray-and-blue plaid flannel sash over her plain linen wedding gown and tied a matching strip around her bouquet. The bridesmaids’ bouquets had been tied with strips of blue flannel, and the entire bridal party had spent the hours before the ceremony draping flannel cloths over the tables inside the white vinyl reception tent and tying pieces of flannel around Mason jars full of sunflowers.

 

If Sansa had still been in high school, or even college, she would have spent the day with her nose planted in the air and her classiest black heels fused to her feet. But she was years past high school, college, and a failed attempt at graduate school, and more than years past cringing at the sight of sunflowers paired with witch hazel or gray shirtdresses paired with brown hiking boots. For one thing, the black pumps would not have gotten her anywhere near the site of the family photo shoot on the mucky ground next to the lake, let alone through the entire photo session; and she could never have gotten this far away from the reception tent without her boots. Sansa, who had spent her first two and a half years after dropping out of the Master of Fine Arts program at the Rhode Island School of Design at a succession of temp jobs, was by no means ungrateful to have landed a secretarial position in the English department of the University of Pittsburgh six months ago. However, after four hours she had had her fill of hearing remarks, both innocent and snide, about what a shame it was for such a brilliant and talented girl as Sansa Stark to have to stoop to working as a secretary. Besides, she had not seen Jon Snow for some time, and she had promised Arya she would ensure that he did not spend the entire weekend apart from the ceremony holed away in his hotel room. Not that she would have blamed him entirely for holing himself away. For one thing, Ygritte, Jon’s girlfriend, had unceremoniously dumped him the day before they were due to leave New York for the wedding. For another, Theon Greyjoy, who was Robb’s and Arya’s most annoying friend and quite possibly the world’s least deserving groomsman, had made matters worse by greeting Jon straight off the plane by asking him if that meant they could go out chasing girls together all weekend.

 

But Sansa had spent two years holed away from the world at large after dropping out of graduate school, and she regretted it now; so when she had noticed Jon’s chair at the head table sitting empty, she had made her excuses to Arya, left the tent, and tramped a half-mile or so along the lakeshore. She had found Jon leaning against a rock, taking pictures of the setting sun with the ancient analog camera he’d carried with him for the entire weekend.

 

“Well,” she said now, “Arya is Arya. If she likes something, it just sort of becomes a fixation.”

 

Jon’s lips turned up much more decidedly. “Aye,” he agreed. “Remember when you were all helping me move to New York from Philly, and she was practicing her martial arts maneuvers on Gendry?”

 

Sansa, who could never in a million years have forgotten the experience or the expression on Gendry’s face as her sister had knocked him flat on his back for the hundredth time, bent over with laughter.

 

“Oh, I remember,” she said at last. “Or how about when you and she were helping Robb move me to Pittsburgh from Providence, and she spent the whole trip playing those God-awful tapes half the night because she wanted to learn Russian?”

 

Jon’s smile widened. “Right, with Gendry in the front seat the whole time,” he recalled.

 

“Poor Gendry,” they said in unison, and this time Jon actually grinned.

 

“Well, he’s stuck with her now,” he said fondly, and Sansa returned his grin.

 

“I heard she’s bribed the editor of the _New York Times_ to use the word ‘FLANNEL’ as the answer to one of its crossword clues in tomorrow’s edition,” she answered, and Jon let out a bark of laughter.

 

“‘Arya Stark’s favorite wedding decoration,’” he said, curling the front two fingers of each hand in imaginary quotation marks, and Sansa giggled. Three years ago, when Sansa had left Providence with her tail between her legs, Jon had helped Robb and Jeyne move her to Pittsburgh, and on that trip they had discovered how much they enjoyed both the _Times’_ s crossword puzzle and beating Robb at Trivial Pursuit. Ever since then, in between road trips – Jon and Sansa had driven with Robb and Jeyne from Pennsylvania to California when Robb had gotten his public relations job in San Diego, and Robb and Sansa had returned the favor when Jon had moved in with Ygritte – they had enjoyed trading puzzle hints and texting each other random odd facts, which had turned into longer chats about their everyday lives and favorite books and everything in between.

 

After a few moments, Jon’s smile faded, but just then a red beam from the setting sun snuck out around a layer of glimmering clouds behind the lake, and his eyes widened silver against the golden light. He positioned his camera carefully and began snapping away. Sansa smiled and fished her tablet out of her shoulder bag. She scrolled through the app screens until she found the program she wanted, then opened it and began swiping her fingers in myriad patterns across the screen. After several minutes she felt Jon’s eyes on her and looked upward. He flushed and gestured toward the tablet.

 

“I didn’t know you drew – on that, I mean,” he said. “Sorry.” His flush deepened; he had always avoided bringing up Sansa’s stint at the Rhode Island School of Design, and so had Sansa, who for a long time after its end had not so much as touched a piece of clay or chalk. Now, she only shook her head.

 

“No, it’s all right,” she said. “I haven’t been doing it for long. But I read about this program online, and it looked like it would be interesting to try. That, and my therapist encouraged me to try it.” She shrugged. “Plus, it’s not sculpture. Drawing was never one of my niches back in the day.”

 

Jon nodded intently; but his gaze was one of empathy, not pity, and Sansa’s chest, which had tightened as she spoke, began to relax. Not even Arya knew she had begun doing anything related to art again.

 

“Do you like it?” Jon spoke so softly that Sansa barely heard him. She looked up from her tablet and raised one eyebrow at him.

 

“The therapy or the art?” she asked. Jon’s face reddened as he gazed out over the lake, although Sansa could not be sure how much of that was due to the rays of the setting sun beaming scarlet through the clouds.

 

“Both,” he said. “I – well, if you feel like saying anything about it, and – I figured after all of this settles down – I’m thinking of moving out of New York, and it can’t hurt to talk to somebody impartial with different ideas.”

 

Sansa’s eyes widened, but she said nothing for some time. Eventually Jon turned his gaze off of the lake and onto her. He must have thought he had offended Sansa, for he looked crestfallen. She hastily strode to his side and put a gentle hand on his arm.

 

“I think it’s a terrific idea,” she reassured him, “and I’m not just saying that either. If it weren’t for my therapist, I don’t know if I’d have made it through this weekend. Don’t get me wrong; I’m happy as hell for Arya and Gendry. But I hate that this all makes me think of Joffrey, and I hate that I got so used to being with that scum that I fell apart so badly I couldn’t handle grad school without him, and I really, really – ” her voice caught an edge, and she cleared her throat – “ _really_ hate being Sansa the spinster secretary when my man-hating sister is starting her happily ever after, you know?” She shrugged and thumbed a tear away from each eye. “It wasn’t really supposed to happen like this.”

 

Jon nodded, and his jaw twitched. It took him a few minutes to reply.

 

“No,” he said at length. “It isn’t. Not that I get it exactly the way you do, but I do get it.” He sighed, and his voice grew a bitter edge. “You’re not supposed to be looking at engagement rings one day and get told you’re too boring to build a life with the next.” He leaned down, retrieved a rock from the ground, and tossed it vehemently into the lake. The ripples had not yet disappeared when Sansa realized that her hand was still on his other arm.

 

“You’re right,” she said, and Jon, who had just bent to pick up another rock, jerked around to face her. His mouth was set in a tight line; but Sansa had felt the pain of both Joffrey Baratheon’s presence and his absence in her life too acutely not to recognize it on another’s face, or to miss the layers of moisture glinting on the surface of Jon’s eyes in the last rays of the sunset.

 

“You’re right,” she repeated. “Sometimes you get a shitty ending instead of a happy one, and you end up being happy you’re a secretary instead of being horrified because you wanted to be a famous artist.” She shrugged. “Or a shitty middle. Or a shitty…something in between.” She squeezed Jon’s arm gently, and his whole body trembled when he exhaled. He took a step toward her, and she thought he might say something when the loud twang of “Cotton-Eyed Joe” echoed across the grounds from the direction of the tent. Sansa released Jon’s arm at once and nearly jumped out of her skin.

 

“Oh, brother,” she said when she could speak again. “She’s more fixated on that stupid song than she is on flannel, and – oh, _shit_!” She whirled to retrieve her tablet and throw her bag back over her shoulder. “That’s their first dance! And the next one’s supposed to be us, and – ”

 

Jon stared at her, bewildered. “Us?”

 

Sansa gestured at him to hurry. “The bridal party – next song – we’ll have to run!”

 

Jon’s eyes widened, but he retrieved his camera at once and turned to follow her. They raced back the way they had come, and burst into the tent not a minute after the song had ended.

 

“Oh, there you are, Sansa,” Arya said, and turned toward the head table. “Right. Bridal party – out!”

 

Chairs scraped, bridesmaids giggled, groomsmen took hasty sips of beer as they stood, and Theon Greyjoy gave Jon a very amused look.

 

“So, Snow,” he said, “I see it didn’t take you long to find a girl.”

 

Jon flinched at that, and Sansa swept to his side, raised her arm, and smacked Theon straight across the back of the head.

 

“You heard her,” she said and jerked her head toward the dance floor as Theon cursed and clutched his own. “Bridal party – out.”

 

She whirled around and marched to the middle of the dance floor, where the bridal party members were still shuffling to get into place – except for Gendry, who grinned and gave Sansa a high-five.

 

“I’ve been wanting to do that all weekend,” he muttered. “Guy’s a pain in the ass.”

 

Sansa found herself grinning back at him. When she turned around, she saw Jon standing next to her, rubbing the back of his neck.

 

“You hit a guy for me,” he said at last. Sansa did not know whether he was horrified or amused until one corner of his mouth quirked upward.

 

Sansa shrugged. “You hit a guy for me once at a wedding,” she replied. “I still owe you for that.”

 

Jon shook his head. “You don’t owe me anything,” he said gruffly. “Besides, that was Jory’s doing too.”

 

Sansa nodded. She had not thought of Joffrey’s attack on her at Robb’s wedding for some time; and when her memory had visited that night before, she had often struggled not to panic, let alone been able to bring it up to anyone aside from her therapist. But Sansa did not panic now, and Jon was not just anyone, and she took a deep breath. Then she smiled at him and nodded toward Jory, who was sitting next to Sansa’s parents with his wife Beth.

 

“Tell you what,” she said. “If we can both get through this dance without tripping over Arya’s sash, I’ll get all three of us a drink. Deal?”

 

Both corners of Jon’s mouth tilted upward this time.

 

“Deal,” he replied.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bran and Meera find their happily ever after. Sansa thinks she's found hers too, but one warm July night and two glasses of champagne turn her world upside-down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Day 4 of the Jonsa Season 7 Summer Challenge hosted by @jonsa-creatives on Tumblr. I chose the "Summer Nights" theme.

It was a fine summer night on the third of July when Sansa Stark and her fiancé, Harry Hardyng, flew from Pittsburgh to Milwaukee to celebrate the wedding of Sansa’s brother Bran to Meera Reed.

 

They were both welcomed warmly by Sansa’s entire family, including Bran’s fiancée, whom he had met in medical school. Sansa teased Bran about upsetting the Stark family’s gender balance by bringing in another girl, but he looked pointedly at Harry, and raised an eyebrow, which caused even Sansa’s normally strait-laced fiancé to chuckle. Meera, gracious as ever, chimed in by asking Sansa about her own wedding plans for the following June. “Now that the hardest part is over,” she said, and, seeing Sansa’s confusion, added with a conspiratorial grin, “Picking the groom, of course.”

 

Sansa had to agree with her: Harry had been an easy choice as a future husband. He had everything a girl could wish for: Ken-doll good looks and the cool charm to match, a Harvard degree, a burgeoning career at the top finance firm in Pittsburgh, and excellent taste in flowers. He had showered Sansa with gifts from the moment they had begun dating and waved away her protests when he had sent her three dozen roses on Valentine’s Day less than three months into the relationship, telling her he would be an idiot to let a good thing go when he found it. Sansa supposed the same applied to her. Harry may have been a bit of a workaholic who chided her on getting too emotional at times, but he was calm and logical, nothing like the petulant bully Joffrey had been. Besides, he was one of the only men she’d met over the past few years who would give her a second date upon learning that she was working as a secretary while she earned her teaching credential.

 

So when Harry had taken her to a five-star Italian restaurant and popped the question with a brilliant-cut two-carat diamond encircled with two layers of smaller stones, Sansa had said yes at once. She would have preferred a simpler ring, but Harry Hardyng was going places in the world, and he told her that he wanted to dress his future wife accordingly. That was true enough, and no girl in her right mind would complain about getting that expensive a ring. Besides, she and Harry both wanted a nice long engagement, which meant that she could get married in the summer, like every other Stark before her.

 

It was another fine summer night on the Fourth of July, when Bran and Meera held their rehearsal dinner at a historic hotel in downtown Madison, Wisconsin. Jon and his own fiancée, Val Freeman, had arrived earlier that afternoon, which had prompted a round of dry jokes from Jon about how long it had been since the two of them had seen Harry and Sansa. Harry and Val groaned; the two of them worked at the same brokerage firm, and they often rolled their eyes at Jon’s puns during the couples’ frequent double dates to restaurants and Harry’s and Val’s frequent company events. But Sansa adored both the puns and the mischievous twinkle in Jon’s eyes when he rattled them off, and she laughed enough for the three of them.

 

“Oh, don’t encourage him so much,” groused Harry, whose own mood had been unusually rotten since they had left Pittsburgh. His firm’s buyout negotiations with a smaller brokerage house had stalled two days prior, and it had been all Sansa could do to pry him away from his job, where he had been working even harder and more feverishly than usual to try and salvage the deal somehow, and get him onto the plane.

 

Sansa stopped laughing and stroked his arm soothingly. “We’re on vacation, honey,” she said, smiling up at him. “We might as well laugh.”

 

Harry rolled his eyes. “Easy enough when you haven’t got a billion-dollar acquisition on your hands,” he muttered.

 

“I know, right?” Val stepped between Jon and Harry and shook her head at the latter. “Can you believe Mallister talked Pycelle into demanding the extra ‘good faith’ clauses being added to the contract? Of course, everybody knew he wanted to drill Mr. Varys because of their history at Casterly Rock, but still…”

 

They talked shop until the two couples retired to their rooms to prepare for the rehearsal dinner. As soon as the door shut, Harry’s mood reverted to sour, and Sansa bit back her observation about how much Robb’s wife Jeyne was glowing, now that she was in the second trimester of her pregnancy with their first child. Small talk only ever made Harry’s bad moods worse.

 

The excellent food and wine served at the rehearsal dinner mollified Harry somewhat, but he was still out of sorts and talked less than usual as the family gathered on the balcony to watch a spectacular fireworks show. He would snap out of it when he was good and ready, Sansa knew, and not before; so she spent most of the show chatting with Bran and Jon, who alternately explained the mechanics of fireworks and exchanged puns with her.

 

Harry disappeared at some point when Sansa was helping her mother, Arya, and Jeyne iron out the next day’s last-minute details with Meera. She could not find Harry anywhere when they were through, and his cell phone kept going to voicemail. Finally she found her father, who informed her that Harry had already gone back to the hotel where the family was staying some time earlier.

 

Sansa sighed as the elevator carried her up to the fifth floor, where she and Harry were staying in the room next to Jon and Val. Perhaps, she thought, it was time for her to break out the red lace bustier at the bottom of her suitcase. After all, they had not made love for over a week, and that particular piece of lingerie was Harry’s favorite of the pieces Sansa owned. It was Sansa’s least favorite, but enduring a few minutes in its scratchy lace and uncomfortably placed underwires was a small price to pay if it snapped him out of his sour mood.

 

But all thoughts of lace and underwires fled Sansa’s head as soon as she opened the door of her hotel room – or rather, she thought as she heard the sounds coming from the bedroom, not her room at all. Either she had had one too many glasses of wine at the rehearsal dinner, she thought as her jaw dropped, or the hotel had mixed up the key cards; for the blonde woman straddling a muscular pair of legs in the dim glow of the next room’s light was none other than Val.

 

“I know,” she was giggling. “So _honorable_ , right? He called it ‘cutting corners!’ Good God, it’s such a turnoff.” She bent downward to kiss the legs’ owner, and Sansa cringed. She turned around and crept toward the door. Jon had become her dear friend and one of her favorite people in the world, and she had been happier for him when he had found Val than she had been for her own siblings when they had gotten engaged, perhaps because Jon deserved such happiness more than anyone after what had happened with Ygritte; but she did not need to watch him having sex with his fiancée.

 

But then a deep laugh issued from the bed, and Sansa stopped dead in her tracks. Her key card dropped noiselessly to the floor as she turned in disbelief. She would know that voice anywhere, and it did not belong to Jon.

 

“Well, that makes me glad,” it said, “because you are a turn- _on_.” It laughed again. “God, it’s a nice change to get some damn passion for once. And they say redheads give the best fucks.”

 

Sansa slowly forced herself to turn around. She knew it was Harry speaking without having to look, of course; but if she did not see the hard proof for herself, she might somehow talk herself out of believing it, and that would make her an even worse fool than she had been to think Harry loved her at all. Sure enough, there he lay, grinning at Val one moment and then groaning the next as she bend to nip her way down his chest.

 

“Oh, God, baby, that’s good,” he muttered. “Yes – like that – oh, God, rough like that, bitch – there – there – ”

 

His face contorted into an ecstasy it never quite had when he had been in bed with Sansa. Unable to bear looking at him or Val for one second more, she pivoted on her heels, twisted the door handle as quietly as she could, and exited the room. She turned to flee down the hallway, but collided into something solid before she could even reach the next room.

 

“Whoa!” Jon reached out to steady her with both hands. He was smiling, but his expression sobered at once as he saw hers. “Sansa? What’s wrong?”

 

Sansa gaped at him wordlessly. Nothing would come out of her mouth – not a word, not a sob, not a scream. That alarmed Jon even more.

 

“Is it Harry? Sansa, what is it?” he pressed, and at the mention of Harry’s name Sansa shook her head frantically.

 

“No – don’t look – it’s – Jon – ” she stammered, glancing back at the door of her room. She noticed with horror that the “Do Not Disturb” sign had gotten wedged in the lock mechanism, preventing the door from shutting all the way. Jon’s gaze snapped over to it at once.

 

“No – Val – ” The words left Sansa’s mouth before she could stop them. Jon’s eyes widened, and he bolted for the room and flung the door open just in time to hear his fiancée screaming – “So – much – better – than that – boring cold fish – ” mixed with Harry’s groans of, “Not – that – dull rut hole – oh, baby, you’re the only one who can – like this – oh, _God_ – ”

 

Jon snapped the light switch on, and the noises stopped abruptly. Val took one look at Jon and flopped onto the bed and off of Harry, who yelped in pain. Then the room fell silent for several tense moments. Sansa risked a glance at Val, whose expression was surprisingly stoic. She stared straight past Sansa, who turned to see Jon standing expressionless beside her. Only the furious rise and fall of his chest gave any indication that he had just seen his fiancée having sex with another man.

 

At length Val cleared her throat, which snapped Jon out of his reverie. His jaw tightened, and then tightened further as he spared a look at Harry. Then he turned around and stalked out of the room.

 

Harry coughed, and Sansa turned back toward him in spite of herself. She wanted to scream any number of things at him – _why?_ , _how could you?_ , _Jon, of all the other people you could have done it to?_ – and she might have done had she not noticed the plate of strawberries and two glasses of champagne sitting on the bedside table. She would have known the Dom Perignon label anywhere, for it was the same type of champagne Harry had had the waiter serve to them the night he had proposed.

 

Sansa did not remember walking over to the table, nor did she understand why neither Harry nor Val had stopped her. But they did not, and Sansa grabbed the fuller of the two glasses and upended it over Val’s head. Val shrieked, but Harry did not look at her. Instead, he stared at Sansa, as if daring her to repeat the motion on him. Without a second thought, she seized the second glass and dumped the contents onto his coiffed blond head. Before he could do anything but yelp, she picked up the bottle, drove its butt end into the covers piled over his groin, and left him moaning in pain as she stalked out of the room and slammed the door behind her.

 

Sansa got perhaps half a dozen steps down the hallway before she realized that she had just left her ex-fiance and his girlfriend in her own hotel room. She sighed. Perhaps one of Meera’s friends or cousins had a bed to spare, but Sansa knew none of them particularly well, and she would rather sleep in the hallway than bother Meera about it. Asking to bunk with any of her other family members would invite questions, and Sansa did not trust herself to lie; and the truth simply would not do, not when Sansa could barely admit to herself that to Harry, her Prince Charming, she was an bland piece of arm candy that he no longer wanted. No, it would be better to withhold the information as long as she could, preferably until after the reception, and tell anyone who inquired about Harry that he had taken ill all of a sudden.

 

_Harry. Right._

 

Sansa fumbled through her purse until she found her phone. Her fingers were shaking, but she managed to text a message to both Harry’s and Val’s numbers.

 

_You’re disinvited. Gtfo before 8:00 tomorrow. Stuff outside door._

 

Sansa bit her lip. She should not have presumed to speak for Jon, and she did not want to bother him any more than she wanted to bother anyone else; but it was either his room or the hallway at this point. More important than that, Val had spat in Jon’s face as hard as Harry had spat in Sansa’s; and Jon should not have to suffer from that alone unless he wanted to. So she pulled herself to her feet and rapped softly on Jon’s door. He opened it not ten seconds later, as though he had been expecting her.

 

“God,” he whispered as he stood aside to let her into the room. “I was about to go out and look for you.”

 

Sansa nodded and crossed her arms over her chest.

 

“I – ” Her voice shook as badly as her fingers were still doing, so she pulled out her phone and showed him the text message she had just sent while she took a few breaths to steady herself.

 

“I figured you’d want – if you want to change anything,” she began, but Jon shook his head.

 

“It’s fine,” he said, his voice taut. His face was flushed, and he reached back to scratch his neck. Sansa nodded.

 

“I mean – I can pack her bag for you if you don’t want to.” Sansa could hear the words running into each other in their haste to escape her mouth, but Jon apparently understood her, for he shook his head.

 

“You don’t have to,” he said. Sansa shrugged.

 

“Least I can do,” she replied. “Especially if I’m wanting – I asked – I mean – can I borrow a blanket for the couch? Or the floor?”

 

She thought she might have slurred the words, for Jon merely stared at her for several moments before he nodded.

 

“I’ll have the couch,” he said, and before Sansa could answer him, he padded over to the sofa and began removing the cushions. Within a few minutes, the two had removed the mattress and topped it with the spare blankets Jon retrieved from the bathroom. Sansa grabbed two pillows from the bed and tossed them on top of the sofa.

 

“I can take it, really,” she said, but Jon shook his head.

 

“Nope,” he replied. “I’ve got it.”

 

Sansa, not wanting to cause any additional conflict, nodded and turned toward the bed. For a moment she expected her suitcase to greet her; but she saw Val’s instead.

 

“And I can pack it up, if you’d rather not – if you want me to,” she said softly. Jon gave her an odd look, as though she might put a match to its contents, but she held up both hands palms outward.

 

“I won’t put snakes in it or anything,” she said, her voice still working at warp speed. “I’ve already dumped champagne on her. That was enough.” Seeing his bewildered look, she added, “Harry had gotten them room service.” Her voice caught an edge, and she felt her eyes sting as the tears sprang into them. She looked away from Jon and shrugged.

 

“I’m sorry, Sansa,” he said softly, and that only made Sansa want to cry more, especially when she saw his concerned expression.

 

“You didn’t do anything,” she replied. “He’s the one who thinks of me as an ugly red-headed sex toy.” Her voice had begun to shake again, but Jon shook his head.

 

“You shouldn’t have had to hear that filth,” he said, spitting out the last word like a curse.

 

“Neither should you,” Sansa responded. “You’re not cold. You’re warm. I mean – warm like you have a heart. The best kind of heart.” Her voice caught, and she bit down hard on her lip to hold her tears at bay.

 

“And you’re not dull.” Jon’s voice gentled. “Or anything else he said.”

 

Sansa shrugged. “I heard worse from Joffrey back in the day,” she said. Jon’s jaw tightened.

 

“You’re still not,” he said, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You should still have better.” His jaw twitched again, and he blinked and inclined his head toward the bathroom. “Least you can have is the bathroom. It’s all yours.”

 

Sansa nodded and once again turned toward the suitcase next to the bed. Once again, she realized that it was not hers.

 

“Shit,” she muttered. She did not realize she had spoken aloud until she heard Jon’s questioning grunt.

 

“Nothing,” she replied. “I’ll get a spare toothbrush from room service if they don’t have one in here. The rest I can manage.”

 

“Oh.” Jon rubbed the back of his neck. “Well – you can use anything in there you want to.” He shrugged one shoulder toward Val’s suitcase. Sansa, who had already decided she would not look at let alone use any of Val’s things except in case of emergency, merely murmured, “Thanks,” and headed for the bathroom. She turned both sink faucets on, but the task of hunting down spare toiletries distracted her thoughts, and the tears that had been threatening to pour out did not come, no matter how hard she willed them to flush themselves out under the cover of the running water. Eventually she smacked the counter in frustration, changed out of her dress and into one of the bathrobes folded neatly on a wicker shelf next to the shower, and shuffled back into the bedroom, where she found Jon staring blankly at a copy of Homer’s _The Odyssey_ , which he always took with him on road trips.

 

“It’s all yours,” she said quietly. “Thanks.”

 

Jon nodded and padded down the hall. By the time he returned to the bedroom, Sansa had buried herself under the covers and switched off the bedside lamp. She laid there motionless until she heard the click of the lamp across the room and the creak of Jon settling his weight onto the sofa. More creaks followed as he shuffled and adjusted the pillows around him, and Sansa took the opportunity to shift her body to face the other way.

 

-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-

 

For the next several hours, they tossed and turned in concert. Sansa quickly gave up trying to sleep when she realized that she would hear Val’s groans or see Harry’s panting face or watch his mouth form the phrase _dull rut hole_ every time she stayed still for more than a few minutes. So she shuffled and shifted as quietly as she could, and every time she did so she could hear Jon repeating her actions on the sofa.

 

Sansa dozed off about the time the sky began to grow light, but she awoke soon afterward to the sound of her phone buzzing. She picked it up and saw a message from Harry.

 

_I paid for the room. Your stuff outside door. Get hers._

 

Sansa wanted to throw her phone at the wall, along with her engagement ring, but instead she forced herself to roll out of bed and turn the bedside lamp to its dimmest setting so she could pack Val’s suitcase. Jon rose from the couch almost immediately and waved off her apology, saying he was awake anyhow. His jaw quivered when Sansa showed him Harry’s message, and for a moment Sansa wondered if he would march into Harry’s room and pin him to the wall as he had pinned Joffrey all those years ago; but instead he helped her round up the last of Val’s belongings and wheeled the suitcase into the hall. He returned with Sansa’s bag in tow. Sansa opened it at once to ensure that everything was intact. Everything was, including her one-shouldered navy silk bridesmaid’s dress. Sansa stared at it and thought of all she would be expected to do and all of the tears she would have to hold in while wearing it. She knew she could do neither; there were too many hours ahead of her, too many people to face, too many false smiles to give. Her tear ducts released the contents they had been holding back for the entire night, and her stomach churned, and she dashed down the hall to Jon’s bathroom. She barely managed to fling open the toilet lid before her stomach released the contents of the prior night’s rehearsal dinner into the bowl.

 

Tears poured down Sansa’s face. She clutched the bowl for dear life as she retched over and over. The ugly aftertaste scalded her throat and made her gag.   She bent forward over the water to let the bile drip out of her mouth, and her hair slid around her shoulders straight into the vomit-filled toilet bowl. Then it disappeared before her eyes, and Sansa blinked, startled. She blinked again when she felt something warm rubbing soothing circles on her back and shoulder. She knew it was Jon’s hand without having to look, and she sighed and let her body slacken into his arms. Her head drooped onto his chest, and her tears poured over her cheeks and soaked freely into his gray T-shirt as he settled them both back against the wall.

 

Eventually Sansa heard Jon murmuring something above her head. He murmured it a few more times before she reluctantly raised her head from his chest. She had to blink at him a few more times before she realized that he was asking her if she felt her stomach was empty. He nodded, gently settled her against the wall, and disappeared from her field of vision. A few moments later he returned with a glass of water. Her hands were shaking again, so he held the glass as she drank from it.

 

“Thanks,” she whispered at length, and Jon set the glass down.

 

“Are you OK to clean up?” he asked. “I can get your mom or Arya or Jeyne to help you if you need it.”

 

Sansa shook her head. “No,” she rasped. “I can do it. I don’t need to bother them. I’m not even telling them about – all this – till after the reception. As far as they’ll know, he’s had a family emergency.”

 

Jon reached back to scratch his neck. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “I supposed there’ll have to be two family emergencies, or she’s really sick.”

 

Sansa shook her head. “People will want the doctor then,” she said, and Jon nodded.

 

“Right,” he said. “Do you want me to bring your bag, or anything out of it? Do you want more water?”

 

After another glass of water, Jon helped Sansa to her feet. She was still trembling, but at least her stomach had calmed, and she forced herself to shower and change. By the time Jon had gotten his own shower, her eyelids and his were beginning to droop, so Sansa made coffee for them, and they spent the next couple of hours reading, or at least pretending to, side by side on the couch, until it was time for Sansa to leave for the family photo shoot.

 

“Try and get a nap, all right?” she murmured as she grabbed her purse and the shoulder bag carrying her bridesmaid regalia. “You’ll have it to yourself now.”

 

Jon nodded but said nothing. Sansa shuffled her weight between feet for a few moments before she reached out to settle one hand lightly on his crossed arms.

 

“Thanks,” she said. “You didn’t have to let me get in your way like that. And make a mess of your bathroom.”

 

Jon only stared down at her hand. His gaze had turned numb, and she thought for a moment that he might cry; but finally he looked back up at her.

 

“There’s nothing to forgive,” he said. Sansa’s thumb stroked reflexively across his arm before she turned and headed out the door.

 

The next several hours passed in a blur; but somehow Sansa managed to smile and nod and make Harry’s excuses to anyone who asked. Arya gave her a suspicious look but said nothing; and that was closest anyone came to discovering the previous night’s events. Sansa even managed to shoot off two text messages to Jon to ask if she should save part of the family’s early dinner for him. He did not want any; but he did catch up to her not long before the ceremony began and pressed his handkerchief wordlessly into her hand.

 

The sun set in a fiery sea of orange and crimson as a fine summer evening set in. Its golden light reflected off the clouds and into the grand atrium of the Wisconsin Museum of History, where Bran Stark married Meera Reed in front of 90 guests arrayed on elegant wooden chairs. Tears streamed down Sansa’s cheeks throughout the entire ceremony, and as soon as she left the atrium behind the departing bride and groom, she pulled Jon’s handkerchief out of her purse. She put it to excellent use throughout the reception, and when she could manage to see out of both eyes she kept on the lookout for Jon. He had made himself scarce at one of the back tables, and although he clapped and raised his glass on cue during the toasts, he stared grimly at his glass the rest of the time. Sansa wanted more than anything to hide at the table with him and rest her hand on his arm again to ease the tension; but the dejected slump of his shoulders told her that neither words nor deeds would do him any good at the moment.

 

Soon enough the dancing began. Sansa pulled out Jon’s handkerchief for at least the dozenth time as the Meera caught her groom’s hands and swayed around his wheelchair to the sound of Elvis Presley crooning “Can’t Help Falling In Love.” She forced herself through the motions of a few dances with one or two of the groomsmen once everyone had been invited onto the dance floor, but exhaustion quickly set in, and she retired to the head table after the fifth or sixth song.

 

“Earth to Sansa! Hello!” Arya’s fingers snapped in front of her sister’s face, and Sansa jumped in her seat.

 

“All right. What’s going on?” Arya crossed her arms and shot Sansa the glare that pinned most people straight to their seats. Sansa was not most people; but she was far too exhausted and felt far too much like crying again to spar with her sister.

 

“I’m fine, Arya,” she said. Arya merely raised an eyebrow.

 

“Even you usually lie better than that,” she replied. “What’s really going on with Harry? He doesn’t have a family emergency, does he?”

 

Sansa shook her head. “We can talk about it later, Arya,” she said wearily. “I don’t want to upset Bran and Meera.”

 

“Over what?” Arya’s voice got sharper, and Sansa sighed.

 

“I said, we’ll talk about it later,” she answered. “Now is not the time.”

 

“Wait, did he – did that bastard break up with you?” Arya’s voice had gone from high to shrill, and a few heads from the front tables turned in their direction.

 

“No,” Sansa replied, lowering her voice. “Well, technically, no, but – it doesn’t matter, Arya.”

 

Arya’s gray eyes went wide, and Sansa could almost see the smoke pouring out of her ears.

 

“Did he – what did he – what did he do to you?” she demanded, and Sansa was only spared further wrath because Gendry walked up behind his wife and put his arm around her shoulders.

 

“Hon,” he said kissing her head, “you OK?” He shot her a meaningful look. “Not making the little bean jump in there too much?” He patted her on the belly, and Sansa’s eyes widened in shock. When Arya turned to mock-growl at her husband, she stood up and bolted out of the room.

 

How Sansa found the bathroom with the tears blurring her vision so badly she could not see straight, she never knew, although it did not do her much good. No sooner had she shoved open the door than she heard the sound of giggles bouncing off the walls. Two of the wedding guests were playfully arguing over which groomsman was hottest, and Sansa’s tears flowed harder, and she left the room as quickly as she had entered it. She turned down the first hallway she could find, but nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw someone huddled against the wall. She wiped the tears out of her eyes, but even if she had not, she would have known the familiar broad shoulders anywhere. Their owner was shaking noiselessly, and he rocked back and forth with his head slumped forward onto his knees.

 

Sansa stopped in her tracks. She swept across the hall, sank to Jon’s side, and embraced him. She nestled her head into his shoulder, splayed one hand across his back, and reached up with the other to stroke his dark curls. Jon continued to shudder, and within a few minutes Sansa felt rivulets of water streaking across her temple and smelled the salt of tears mingling with Jon’s usual scent of pine and earth and hazel. She traced her right thumb in a continuous circle over Jon’s neck. At length she heard somebody humming a low, lilting tune, and she almost jumped back in shock when she realized the sound was emanating from her own throat. Both Harry and her employers had frowned on her humming, and that combined with the stresses of her classes had made it a rarer and rarer occurrence. But now her voice vibrated in tandem with Jon’s deep breaths, which were slowly evening out; and at length she reached away from him to grab her purse from where she had dropped it heedlessly on the floor. She retrieved the handkerchief he had lent her and held it out to him.

 

“It’s still a bit wet,” she said apologetically, but Jon paid her no mind. He blew into it noisily several times before using the corners to wipe his eyes. When he was finished, he held it out to her; but Sansa closed his hand around it and propped her knees up alongside his. She rested her chin onto her knees and bent her head to look into his eyes. They were bleak and bloodshot; but she reached up unheeding and rubbed her thumb along his arm. He stared at it blankly for a few minutes before glancing up at her.

 

“Not too cold, then?” he asked. Sansa’s hand stopped still on his arm for a moment, and she narrowed her eyes, but only a little.

 

“What did you call what they said about me – filth?” she asked. “Allow me to call it utter fucking bullshit, Jon Snow. You’re the least cold person I know.”

 

Jon blinked, and two more tears rolled down his cheeks; but he did not look away. “Boring, then,” he said. “When one person says it, it’s them; but if two who knew you like that say it…” He shrugged, and his shoulders slumped again.

 

“Then in that case, boring is the best thing there is,” replied Sansa. Jon’s eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch, and she raised her hand to his shoulder. “And if you’re boring, then fuck the exciting people. Exciting to them means not having a fucking heart. And you have the best heart I’ve ever seen.” Her voice trembled, and she swallowed to combat the lump that had arisen in her throat. “So ‘boring’ really means kind and smart and generous and liking really great books, and letting people throw up on you and cry on you and not complaining, and forgiving people left and right, and – and being the best person in the world.” The lump rose again, and she swallowed it again. “So fuck them. ‘Boring’ is the best thing people like that could possibly say about somebody so much more wonderful.”

 

The tears began rolling down her cheeks, and she leaned her forehead onto Jon’s shoulder. In a moment his arms were around her, and his thumbs were wiping the tears off her cheeks. When she looked up at him, he leaned forward, and she closed his eyes as she felt his lips press a warm kiss to her forehead. When he drew back, he opened his arms, and Sansa curled up in them gladly, nestled her head back into his shoulder, and closed her eyes. She cared not if she missed the rest of the dances. The rest of the family – and the rest of her life – could wait a little longer.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rickon and Lyanna have the perfect rustic northern wedding until the drama ensues. Jon and Sansa are left holding the bag...and Sansa's adorable niece and nephew. Jon has terrible timing. Sansa finds answers to the question she didn't know existed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Day 5 of the Jonsa Season 7 Summer Challenge hosted by @jonsa-creatives on Tumblr. I chose the "Firsts" theme.

Spring arrived late the year Rickon Stark married Lyanna Mormont at a lodge in the middle of the forests on the Wisconsin side of Lake Superior. The piles of snow flung onto the ground by the blizzards of the preceding winter had taken until the third week of May to melt entirely, and the crocuses barely bloomed at all. Sansa Stark thanked her lucky stars that the bride had chosen long-sleeved dresses for her bridesmaids, and when she said so out loud, Lyanna declared that fur pelts, her initial choice, would have done even better.

 

Sansa shook her head. Lyanna Mormont, a ranger at nearby Pattison State Park, could hunt as well as Rickon (which was saying something) and skin her targets even better. She kept the pelts from many of the animals she hunted, including the pelt from her first bear, which she had shot at the age of thirteen. She also hated small talk, embellishments, bluffing, and all things impractical; so when she had stated at her engagement party that she did not see why some of her pelts could not be put to good use as bridesmaids’ dresses, Sansa, who had not known her terribly well at the time, had thought she might be serious. Not wanting to take that chance, she had offered at once to take Lyanna shopping for the fabric of her choice and then sew the dresses out of it herself. The younger woman had selected a sturdy forest green cotton blend, and Sansa had wasted no time in buying it.

 

Now, after having experienced more of her future sister-in-law’s affable side, Sansa understood that the chance of Lyanna’s actually forcing her to wear a fur pelt had not been as high as she had thought; but she was still glad she had come up with an alternative. So she blushed furiously when Jon Snow arrived at the lodge the day before the wedding, for he greeted her by hugging her warmly and calling her the wedding’s grand dressmaker. A warm tingle danced through her chest.

 

“I don’t know anything about _grand_ , sir,” she replied, raising her eyebrows at him.

 

Jon bowed. “Pardon me, my lady,” he said, grinning impishly. “I know the dresses you were commissioned sadly underused your talents. I had heard that you preferred the challenge of sewing a thousand fur pelts.”

 

The warm tingle returned. It had recurred off and on for some time now, almost always when Jon or someone else was praising her for her work at teaching or sewing or decorating her apartment. Usually it was with Jon; but he complimented her more often than did anyone else, for they saw each other nearly every day now. After the disaster at Bran’s wedding, they had bonded more closely than ever, not only over both their anguish at having their respective fiancées cheat on them with each other, but also over the books they traded and the sunset hikes they often took together. At any rate, Jon had become Sansa’s strongest supporter during the grueling days she had spent studying for her teaching credential and then afterwards, when she embarked, scared witless, on her first term as an English teacher. So it was no wonder that that electric tingle appeared most often around Jon; but Sansa was still uncomfortable at being praised, since none of the men she had been with before Harry’s infidelity had made her swear off dating for the foreseeable future had praised her for much of anything. However, the tingling still pleased some odd part of her even more than it discomforted her, and Sansa was not sure what to make of it. So she stuck out her tongue at Jon and told him that he could sew the pelts for the next wedding they attended, and he laughed, an easy, uninhibited sound Sansa had never been able to resist. She laughed with him, and Jon headed to the desk to obtain his room key.

 

The brief wedding ceremony took place under a cloudless blue sky late the next afternoon. Sansa grinned through most of it, not just because of the joy shining on the faces of both bride and groom but also because Lyanna Mormont had topped her wedding dress with a long cape of thick black bear fur.

 

Afterward, the guests gathered under a huge canvas tent for dinner, which consisted partly of game the bride and groom had shot themselves. The ale and wine flowed freely during both the feast and the dancing that followed. Polka after polka poured out of the deejay’s speakers into the crisp evening air, mingled with country love songs and vintage folk tunes.

 

It was during the Beach Boys’ “Roll Out the Barrels” polka that the final and most unexpected entertainment of the night began. At the end of the second verse, Jeyne, Robb’s wife, dashed off the dance floor and vomited onto the grass. Robb dashed to her side at once, handing off Eddie, their young son, to Sansa. At length he returned to speak low into Sansa’s ear.

 

“I’m taking her to the bathroom back in the lodge,” he said. “She’s pregnant again, but she hasn’t gotten too sick till now. It’s still early, so we hadn’t thought to tell anyone yet.”

 

Sansa smiled. “No one’ll hear it from me,” she told him. “Go take care of her; I’ll handle Eddie. And – congratulations, Robb. Tell Jeyne I said so too.”

 

Robb shot her a brief grin as he headed off to accompany Jeyne back into the lodge. Eddie’s little face wrinkled, but Sansa began playing peek-a-boo with him, and soon he was giggling.

 

But the giggles did not last for long. Out of the corner of her eye, Sansa saw another guest dashing from the tent in the direction of the lodge. A minute or two later, one of the groomsmen bolted away from the head table, flinging his chair to the ground beside him in his haste to leave the tent. He was followed by one of the flower girls, whom Sansa had heard complaining to her mother earlier of a stomachache.

 

Both parents dashed after the little girl at once. Sansa, startled, stopped in the middle of her game with Eddie to stare at the bridal couple, both of whom seemed oblivious to the events unfolding around them. Then she almost leaped out of her chair when she felt a hand clap her shoulder.

 

“Hold my bag,” said Arya’s shaking voice, and Sansa turned to see Arya, her face unusually pale, dropping her purse unceremoniously onto the chair next to Sansa’s. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

 

She ran off toward the lodge, and Sansa only tore her eyes away from her sister when Eddie started to cry. She tried to play peek-a-boo with him again, but that did not soothe him, so she tried singing, although it became harder to focus when two more guests dashed out of the tent simultaneously. Her stomach sank. Both people had been clutching at their stomachs, and Arya had had a hand on hers as she had dashed off. Something must have been wrong with the food, she thought, and her hold on Eddie tightened. Food poisoning, while uncomfortable for adults, could be downright dangerous for young children. She searched her nephew’s face for any sign of a similar affliction; but he only wriggled in her arms and tried to twist himself down onto the ground, which made Sansa sigh with relief. Still, Jeyne was pregnant, and food poisoning could also be dangerous to pregnant women. And if the problem came from bad strain of bacteria instead of simple food poisoning –

 

Just then, Sansa felt a gentle grip on her shoulder and turned around to see Jon crouched next to her, his gray eyes alight with concern.

 

“Robb’s taking Jeyne and Arya to the hospital,” he reported, “and Gendry’s going with them. A few other people are going too. They’ve all been throwing up a lot. Robb and I and another girl are driving them all in our cars.” He crawled two fingers up Eddie’s arm, and the toddler gleefully chased the “finger-man,” as he always called it when Jon played the game with him, and giggled.

 

“You OK with watching Eddie?” Jon asked, and Sansa nodded.

 

“Of course,” she replied. “Tell Robb and Jeyne not to worry. And if by off chance he gets sick, I’ll drive him myself.”

 

Jon nodded. He leaned closer, and his eyes had widened enough for Sansa to see the brown flecks splashed onto his gray irises. “How about you? Are you OK?” he asked quietly.

 

Sansa nodded again. “I’m all right,” she said. “Don’t worry about me. And you?” Her eyes narrowed as she checked him for any sign of unusual paleness or sweating; for Jon would be the last person to admit he felt poorly if he were in the middle of a task, especially one that involved helping other people. But he looked the picture of health, and after a moment Sansa nodded.

 

Eddie did not stay with her for long, however. Jon had not been gone half an hour when Meera and Bran took ill at the same time. Their car was the only one at the event equipped to handle Bran’s wheelchair, but neither of them was in any condition to drive it, and Sansa said so to Catelyn Stark, who after her husband had volunteered to drive another round of guests to the hospital was the only other Stark adult left at the reception.

 

“I promised Jon I’d stay here with Eddie, Mom,” she said, “but he’ll stay just as well for you, and he’ll like playing with Lya.” She gestured toward Gendry and Arya’s one-year-old daughter, who was currently playing with Catelyn’s long necklace. “Besides, I’ve driven Bran’s car before, and I don’t want you to have to deal with getting down this hill at night.”

 

Catelyn Stark, who had always had weaker night vision than anyone in the family, sighed and nodded.

 

“You’re right,” she said. “You should go.”

 

Less than an hour later, Sansa, having deposited Bran and Meera safely into the arms of two harried-looking nurses, entered the emergency room waiting area of Superior, Wisconsin’s St. Mary’s Hospital. She spotted Jon and her father huddled together in one corner and rushed to join them, but no sooner had she opened her mouth than she was interrupted by Robb’s hand on her shoulder.

 

“They it’s just food poisoning,” he said, “but they’re watching Jeyne closely just to be sure, and they took samples from everybody so they could test for _E. Coli_ and other bacteria like that.” He sighed heavily, and Sansa and Jon both reached forward at once to put their arms around him. Robb smiled.

 

“She’ll be in overnight?” Sansa asked, and hastened to add, “Don’t worry; Eddie’s with Mom and Lya. Bran and Meera got sick, so I drove them here.”

 

Robb nodded. “Yeah, she’ll be here overnight,” he said. “And Mom – did she look OK?”

 

Sansa nodded in her turn. “Oh, yes,” she replied quickly. “And she has your other room key, so she can get anything he needs tonight.”

 

But Catelyn Stark did not spend the night at the lodge. She arrived at the emergency room under an hour later, vomiting, and Lyanna’s sister Dacey, who had driven her, handed the two distraught toddlers to Jon and Sansa, for Ned Stark had rushed to his wife’s side at once.

 

Jon played “finger-man” with Eddie, and Sansa sang to Lya; but neither child would stop crying, even when Jon handed Lya to Sansa and Sansa passed the wailing Eddie to Jon. The room’s other inhabitants began shooting them dirty looks while Sansa rummaged through the diaper bags Catelyn had given to Dacey for toys to amuse her niece and nephew. But toy after toy failed as badly as had the games; and finally Sansa gave up and gestured to Jon, who followed her out into the hallway.

 

“Are they hungry?” he asked, his voice sounding frayed, and Sansa shook her head.

 

“No,” she replied. “I saw Jeyne and Arya feeding them at the reception. I’m sure they just miss Robb and Jeyne and Arya and Gendry, especially since they’re in an unfamiliar environment. And – ” she craned her neck to look at the wall clock, which read 10:39 – “they’re probably pretty tired.”

 

Jon sighed. “All right,” he said. “Do you want me to grab some chairs out of the waiting area?”

 

Sansa nodded. “If they’ll allow it,” she replied. “Thanks.”

 

Once Jon had obtained the chairs, he sat and tried to keep Eddie from squirming out of his lap, and Sansa did much the same with Lya. She started singing again, which calmed Lya somewhat, but Eddie still kept wriggling and wailing. Sansa nearly fell out of her chair when Jon began to sing with her, which showed just how desperate he had become; but his voice had no more effect on Eddie than had anything else, and Lya began crying again, although not as loudly as she had at first.

 

Jon stopped singing and let out a long breath. Sansa held out one arm.

 

“I can take him, Jon,” she said. Jon shook his head.

 

“No,” he said gruffly. “She’s closer to sleeping than he is. Leaving you would make her mad again.” He sighed again, and Sansa kicked her heels onto the floor and stood up. She rubbed her niece’s back and walked toward the end of the hall with her, still singing softly, then turned and headed back toward Jon and Eddie. This time, Jon was staring at her quizzically, and Eddie’s screams had lessened.

 

By the time Sansa turned again, Jon’s head was bent close to Eddie’s, and he was whispering into the little boy’s ear. Eddie pointed to Sansa and Lya in response. Tears still coursed down his cheeks, but he seemed calmer.

 

On Sansa’s next lap around the hall, she heard footsteps behind her, and she turned to see Jon carrying Eddie toward her. The boy’s head rested on Jon’s shoulder, and he turned to peer at his aunt and cousin as Jon passed Sansa by. Sansa smiled.

 

“What were you telling him?” she asked hours later, when they were both slumped into neighboring chairs back in the waiting room. Robb and Gendry, having been assured by the doctors that their wives were bacteria-free and on the mend, had retrieved their sleeping children from Jon’s and Sansa’s arms.

 

Jon took a sip of coffee from his Styrofoam cup and smiled. “I was telling him to see what a good job his aunt was doing singing to his cousin,” he replied. There was no hint of teasing in his voice, and the warm tingle crept across Sansa’s back again.

 

“I think he thought you were giving her a ride, like on a horse, because he seemed to like it,” continued Jon. said Jon, “Then I asked him if he wanted me to walk around with him too, and he – well, I guess he liked it.”

 

Sansa grinned. “You’d make a great father,” she said. The words flew out of her mouth before she could stop them, and she blushed furiously.

 

Jon shrugged and reached to rub the back of his neck, which had flushed pink.

 

“I mean – assuming you want kids – I shouldn’t assume,” Sansa added hastily, although she was fairly certain they had discussed the matter before. Jon shook his head.

 

“I always did,” he said simply. He removed his hand from his neck and reached over to touch her elbow gently. “You have to know what an amazing mother you’d make, Sansa. I – I mean, assuming – ”

 

Sansa shook her head quickly. “So have I,” she said, and felt her flush deepen. The warm tingle slid down the length of her spine, and she bit her lip and looked down. “I’ve – I just always made shit decisions about the guys who would have been their fathers.”

 

She looked up again when she felt Jon tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

 

“No, Sansa,” he said. “They made shit decisions about you.” He took a ragged breath, and Sansa’s chest tightened. “They didn’t deserve you.” His face was close to hers again, and the brown flecks danced in an odd light. “And you didn’t deserve them, because you’re the kindest and strongest and wisest and the most beautiful person I know. That I’ve ever known.” His voice had lowered to a whisper, and Sansa’s chest had tightened to a knot, but the tingling in her back had spread to the knot and untied a part of it, and she felt as though she were about to jump out of a plane and land in paradise if only she got the fall right. Judging by the length of the breath Jon was inhaling and the flush that was spreading up his neck and over his face, so did he.

 

“Which means I don’t deserve you, Sansa, not at all,” whispered Jon. His other hand had reached out to enfold hers, and she was too stunned to offer any resistance. “But I love you. I love you, and I will always try to deserve you, even if I can’t.” He blinked, and the harsh overhead lights glinted off the extra layer of moisture that had suddenly sprung into each of his eyes. “And if you don’t want to hear it, or talk about it, I won’t – I won’t do it again. But I saw Rickon looking at Lyanna today, and that’s how I see you, and I wanted to you know.” His thumb stroked her cheek tenderly. “I’ll always see you that way, Sansa Stark.”

 

Sansa blinked, and blinked again. She kept on blinking until she felt the ground fall away from underneath her. The tingle exploded in her chest, and the knot shattered, and tears poured down her cheeks. She threw herself out of her seat and into Jon’s arms, where she buried her face in his shoulder and whispered into it the only words she could: _I love you, I love you, I love you._ She felt Jon’s voice answer her own into her hair, and then onto her cheek. Slowly, she pulled back and saw him beaming at her through his tears. She beamed back, and he brushed his thumbs across her wet cheeks and over her temples. One reached down and grazed her lips. As if of its own accord, Sansa’s hand rose, and her front two fingers repeated the gesture on his own lips.

 

“You’re beautiful, Jon Snow,” she whispered and rested her forehead against his. His thumb stroked her temple again, and his other arm wrapped around her back to draw her snugly to him as his lips covered hers. They were warm and firm and soft and gentle and gone far too quickly; but before Sansa could protest, they pressed into her mouth again, and more firmly. His thumb rubbed tender circles around her jaw, and he moved his mouth to caress first her upper lip and then her lower lip, and then he angled his head and caught her entire mouth again. Sansa’s head swam, and her mouth opened eagerly to meet his, and the tingling spread to her fingertips and crackled into her toes.

 

Paradise looked an awful lot like a dingy hospital waiting room; but Sansa did not care. She did not care when her purse fell off the chair and onto the brown carpeted floor. She did not care when Dacey’s startled shriek pierced the air somewhere above her head. She did not care when Gendry yelped, “My _eyes_!”, although she and Jon pulled away from each other long enough to see his hands resting on a wheelchair bearing Arya and Lya, flanked by a very bewildered nurse. Arya reached up and smacked her husband lightly on the arm.

 

“Oh, stop it,” she said. “I told you they’d get around to it some time.” She pushed herself off the chair and raised her eyebrows at Sansa.

 

“Took you long enough,” she grumbled. She turned on her heel, ignoring the nurse’s protests, and stalked out of the room.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A springtime blizzard brings on more Stark family drama...and quite a bit of heat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Day 6 of the Jonsa Season 7 Summer Challenge hosted by @jonsa-creatives on Tumblr. I chose the "Music" theme.

Sansa Stark married Jon Snow nine months after Rickon’s wedding. It was the first day of spring, but a fierce blizzard swept out of the north just as the ceremony began. Snowflakes swirled around the stained-glass windows of the historic church and cast ethereal beams of light on the pews and white-carpeted aisle. Sansa grinned as she took her last glance through the windows adorning the foyer where she and her father stood waiting for Arya, the maid of honor, to reach the altar.

 

The Sansa who had stared at the stained-glass windows during Robb’s wedding so long ago had dreamed of marrying in an art museum, or perhaps the St. Paul Cathedral, at the height of summer; and at the center of it all she had imagined herself in a bejeweled ball gown and surrounded by bridesmaids in identical yellow chiffon gowns carrying red roses. But that Sansa had wanted a long engagement and a marriage to Joffrey Baratheon, and both ideas seemed equally ridiculous to her now. In any case, the brief length of her engagement had sent Jon scrambling to his friend Sam Tarly, the church’s pastor, to snag it as their venue, and sent Sansa and her family scrambling to the Mall of America and the nearest Michaels to get cloth, candles, beads, and everything else the bride-to-be needed in order to craft her own wedding decorations. There was no time to order custom-made dresses; so Sansa had told her bridesmaids to select the champagne-colored gowns of their choice and bought a sample gown for herself in the second bridal salon she had visited. It was all very rushed; but Sansa had grinned madly the first time she saw the diverse assortment of bridesmaids’ dresses next to her own and thought she could never have imagined such a beautiful arrangement if she had planned it herself. She had hummed every evening as she had assembled decorations out of the very non-uniform assortment of beads and ribbons she and her family had managed to snag at the store. Her humming had turned to singing, and Jon had often crept up behind her to take her in his arms and hum along with her. His voice was never quite on-key, but Sansa never cared, especially when he would slowly turn her body into his arms and begin kissing her, which made her knees buckle and her mind forget about everything but Jon’s strong arms and passionately tender kisses and and whispers of _I love you, Sansa Stark._

 

That, Sansa reflected now as she grinned even more widely, was probably why she and her family members had been up until 2:00 on the morning of the rehearsal dinner finishing the decorations. Ned Stark turned to look at his daughter and shook his head.

 

“You’re the first one of my children with fewer tears than me on their wedding day,” he said, but his trembling voice belied his light tone. He opened his mouth to continue, but instead shook his head again and bent to kiss her cheek.

 

“I’m your rebel, I guess, Dad,” Sansa whispered back, and suddenly her own voice started to quiver. “I’m not getting married in the summer or in Wisconsin. Or in the sun.” She inclined her head toward the snow pounding against the nearest window, a tiny opening covered by a glass depiction of a blue rose against a gray background studded with clear, sparkling snowflakes. “And I’m not twenty-four years old, like everybody else.”

 

Ned Stark kissed his daughter’s cheek again. “Your husband was worth waiting a lot more than twenty-four years for,” he said gruffly, and tears blurred Sansa’s vision. She leaned her head onto his shoulder and felt him kiss her briefly on the forehead before she straightened, adjusted her bouquet of white roses, and watched the ushers open the double wooden doors in front of her.

 

In the weddings created by Sansa’s fancy years ago, she smiled at her groom warmly, but not too soppily; and she teared up a bit, but did not actually cry. Now, the moment the doors opened, tears began pouring down her cheeks, which were split nearly in two by the most utterly foolish grin Sansa had ever worn. She cried when her father placed her head into Jon’s, and she cried as Sam began the wedding sermon. Jon’s own eyes were suspiciously wet, and he kept reaching over to thumb the tears gently off of her cheeks. So neither of them noticed the murmur that spread among the guests seated at the front of the church five minutes or so into the message. Neither, in fact, noticed any sign of trouble until Catelyn Stark’s yelp brought both of them turning sharply to see Edd Tollett, Jon’s friend and groomsman, fainting dead away into the arms of a very startled Robb, who had been standing next to him. Sam stopped speaking at once, and he did not continue until Edd had been roused and helped out of the room by Jon’s friends Tormund Giantsbane and Davos Seaworth to a round of applause from the entire room. He made a joke about the building’s overly enthusiastic heating system before continuing, but his jest had more merit than Sansa had thought, for not five minutes later, Rickon swayed and collapsed. Tormund caught him just in time, and Lyanna sprinted out of the room after them both. Sansa felt Jon squeeze her hands, and she turned back to him at once.

 

“You all right?” he whispered in a voice so low that not even Sam heard it, and the smile returned to Sansa’s face, and she nodded.

 

“How about you?” she murmured; and the tender joy that lit Jon’s face was all the answer she needed.

 

Bran went pale and had to be wheeled out of the sanctuary by Meera right after Jon and Sansa had spoken their vows; but by then Edd, still pale, had returned, and Sam paused the ceremony again while two of the ushers retrieved a chair from one of the back rooms and set it on the dais so he could take back his place by Robb’s side. They repeated the same procedure for Rickon, who re-entered the sanctuary right before the exchanging of the rings; and Meera wheeled Brank back in just in time for Sam to pronounce Jon and Sansa husband and wife. Before he had time to finish instructing Jon to kiss his bride, the latter had thrown his arms around her and kissed her senseless. Loud whoops punctuated their march up the aisle; but Sansa only giggled with happiness.

 

The wind howled more fiercely as the evening went on, and snowflakes piled merrily around the hotel where the reception was held. All three of the afflicted groomsmen had recovered enough to initiate round after round of glass clinking during the dinner, and they needled Jon when he kissed his wife thoroughly each time. They teased even more mercilessly when the deejay announced the first dance, although Sansa merely rolled her eyes and informed them that she would not expect any of them to appreciate her husband’s excellent taste in music. Jon, a long-term Nickelback fan, grinned and kissed her in appreciation as the band’s “Far Away” played over the hall’s speakers. When the chorus started, his smile widened, and so did Sansa’s, and they sang the words to each other:

 

_I love you;_

_I have loved you all along._

_I’ve missed you;_

_Been far away for far too long._

 

When the second verse began, Jon pulled his wife in for a gentle kiss. Sansa returned it a little less gently, and their lips spent most of the rest of the song connected.

 

“Oh, God, get a _room_ ,” Arya muttered over the whoops of the groomsmen as the two departed the dance floor. Sansa stuck out her tongue.

 

Time whirled away along with the snowflakes, and Sansa whirled happily across the dance floor. Jon had never been much of a dancer, but he could not stop beaming in any case. Only when Jon twirled Sansa near the corner of the floor during a waltz did an enthusiastic argument between Rickon and Gendry snap out of their reverie.

 

“What’s all that about?” Sansa asked Robb when the dance was over.

 

Robb grinned. “They made a bet,” he replied. Sansa narrowed her eyes, but Robb took no notice. “They’ve each been trying to talk the deejay into playing a different song. They have to drink every time they fail.

 

Sansa, who had heard no deviations from the list she had gone over with the deejay, shook her head. Jon grinned next to her. “Which songs?” he asked.

 

Robb’s blue eyes twinkled. “Gendry asked for ‘My Humps.’ Rickon picked ‘Baby Got Back.’”

 

Jon snorted, and Sansa grinned widely enough to outdo Robb. “Oh, Lancel Lannister won’t play anything I told him not to,” she replied. “I have way too much dirt on him from when we were at the U of M together.”

 

So she was not surprised when she heard Lyanna declaring loudly to her husband during the next dance that she could still drink him under the table and then have some more ale in their hotel room besides, and still dance better than he. Sansa and Jon took one look at each other and began laughing. They only laughed harder when they saw the silly grin on Gendry’s face as he swung Arya happily and sang her the words of Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You, Babe.” Arya was shaking her head; but Sansa caught the mischievous glint in her eye as she and Jon sashayed past the two. She snorted, and then snorted again when she saw Robb and Jeyne swaying in each other’s arms and kissing all the way across the dance floor next to Bran, who was whispering something to a blushing, giddy Meera.

 

“Oh, God,” she groaned. “How much do you want to bet one of them conceives our next niece or nephew tonight?”

 

Jon only grinned. “Maybe all four,” he said. Sansa snorted again. Then she bit her lip and fixed him with a devilish grin.

 

“How about we go all the way and make it five?” she suggested. Jon’s answering grin was even more devilish than her own.

 

“I’m game if you are,” he said, and leaned down to whisper in her ear as the song ended, “I’ve got you, babe.”

 

Sansa blushed.

 

She blushed harder when Jon kissed her senseless in the corner during the next song. She blushed even harder when the deejay announced the bride and groom’s departure, and squealed when Jon swept her up in his arms to carry her off the floor and into the hallway containing the elevator that led to the bridal suite. And she felt her entire body flushing red when Jon set her down inside the elevator and began planting kisses down her neck and shoulder. Once they reached the suite, Sansa, determined to give him back as good as she had gotten, proceeded to attack his lips with her own.

 

“This room’s even hotter than the church, dear,” she said when they finally drew back to catch their breath. She wiggled her eyebrows at him. “Do you mind helping me take off my dress?”

 

Jon’s eyes went a shade darker, and his answering hum had a distinct rumble to it. Sansa grinned and turned her back to him. She expected him to undo the zipper as quickly as he could; but instead he nibbled a trail of kisses from the base of her neck all the way down her spine. They made Sansa hum and shiver, like the snowflakes kissing the windows of the suite; and by the time Jon lowered her dress carefully to the floor, she could barely step out of it due to her thighs rubbing each other in anticipation and delight.

 

“Your turn,” she rasped after kissing Jon deeply once again. Her lips drew a long line of kisses down his chest as she unbuttoned his shirt, kisses punctuated by his groans of _Sansa, Sansa, Sansa._ By the time she had flung his shirt to a far corner of the bed, his gray irises had turned nearly as dark as his pupils. When he leaned over her to undo the straps of her lingerie, he pressed his mouth to her shoulders and neck over and over; and by the time he reached back to take her mouth, Sansa was groaning loudly, and she moaned _Jon, Jon, Jon_ into his mouth as she opened her legs to wrap them tightly around his waist.

 

The snowflakes continued to fall, and the wind continued to howl; but their chill could not match the heat of Jon’s kisses trailing up and down his new wife’s body, and their wailing could not match the keening emanating from Sansa as that body writhed with pleasure, or the moans Jon hummed in concert into her neck. Nor could snow or wind have hoped to shatter the tender gaze with which his gray eyes fixed his wife’s as Sansa gladly opened her lips and her body to fuse herself joyfully with her husband. And neither howling nor chill could drown out the cries of ecstasy and love that mingled in air and across clutched hands and on warm, undulating flesh alike.

 

After a time, the snow stopped falling, and the wind ceased howling, and husband and wife lay cradled in each other’s arms. Jon stroked Sansa’s flushed cheek, and she ran a gentle hand through his sweaty curls.

 

“I suppose Arya should be happy now,” she whispered, a lazy grin on her face.

 

Jon reached over to kiss her forehead. “Why is that, my love?” he murmured.

 

“Well,” Sansa replied, “she did tell Gendry after Rickon’s wedding that it had taken us long enough to get together. And tonight, she did tell us to get a room.” She wiggled her eyebrows at him, and Jon chuckled. “And I have a few more plans for how we can use it this weekend.”

 

Jon reached up to brush a strand of hair off his wife’s face. “And I intend to follow them all, love of my life,” he whispered, and planted a tender kiss on her lips.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many, many thanks to the ladies at @jonsa-creatives over on Tumblr for hosting the Jonsa Season 7 Summer Challenge. If it hadn't been for them, I wouldn't have gotten the idea for this story, let alone been so motivated to finish it!


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